


Count On It

by RainbowArches



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, mentions of OC death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-07-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 10:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4260270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainbowArches/pseuds/RainbowArches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick and Skye talk about stuff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Count On It

It was an uncomfortably hot night. Skye could feel a gross sweaty damp spot forming on her tank top where it was clinging to her back. Her hair blanketed her neck annoyingly; she didn’t have anything to tie it up with. It was so hot that Fury was wearing a t-shirt for the first time ever. The ceiling fan was too slow to be of any use. There was no breeze outside, but they’d left all the windows open anyway, hoping. They’d even turned all the lights off, thinking it would cool the house down somewhat. Nothing helped.

Still, the quiet dimness of the kitchen was a comfort after a long day of training recently metamorphosed inhumans. She’d felt rather pleased with herself, examining the bruises along her legs and ribs, tokens from a good days work. The others would come in exhausted and complaining tomorrow and they’d be even harder to deal with, but for now she’d count her victories. They were making headway. Even Fury thought so.

The icy chilled beer in her grip was a comfort too, and it was so tempting to rub the bottle all over her face and chest, get the sticky sweaty feeling off her. She didn’t though, because Fury wasn’t complaining about the heat and part of her still wanted to prove to him that she could take as big a hit as he could. He knew that already; he’d said so. Didn’t make his calmly and casually dealing with it attitude any easier to swallow.

She heard him sigh and out of the corner of her eye saw him wipe the beads of sweat of the back of his neck with his palm, take his eye patch of and take a swig from his beer.

He was here for a couple more days before he had to go back to the Avengers base. Skye wondered if he’d enjoyed his time here, helping her train a bunch of cocky brats. The two of them had done nothing but argue the entire time, but Skye knew she’d miss him, especially after that “Good work, agent,” this afternoon.

This evening instead of griping at each other they’d opted for silence. The only sound was the clock ticking and the moths batting at the screen, louder and louder the more she noticed. Skye wasn’t normally comfortable with silence but this was nice. It was the most companionable she’d felt with him in the two weeks he’d been here. She had this warm sense of accomplishment like she had after she’d finally connected with May.

“I’m twenty-seven today,” Skye said. She didn’t know why she felt it was worth mentioning. She wasn’t expecting him to care, and she’d been perfectly fine letting her birthday role by without comment. There was only half an hour of her birthday left. She could have let it slip quietly past. She’d avoided telling her friends when her real birthday was because she didn’t want them to feel any obligation.

She turned to find Fury frowning at her in… surprise or confusion, she wasn’t sure witch. It’d be the first time she saw him express either feeling.

“Yeah, sorry, I don’t know why I’m telling you,” Skye continued; because she couldn’t let it just hang in the air. “I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. I just thought I should… mark the occasion somehow, I guess, for the first time ever.”

“You never celebrated your birthday before?”

“I never knew when it was. But even the day I thought was my birthday, I never celebrated that either.”

“How come?”

Skye shrugged, and wondered how much to get into it with him. Just telling him how old she was was more personal than they’d got before. He probably didn’t want to hear about all the lousy foster parents she had who hadn’t cared enough to throw her a party, or all the nice foster parents she had who couldn’t afford to throw her a party or who had to send her away too soon. And then she wondered how new any of it would be to him. Considering everything she knew about SHIELD agents, he’d probably heard all the sob stories. “I guess I just don’t like birthdays much,” she answered.

She felt his curious gaze stay on her a while, before he went “Mm,” like he understood what she hadn’t said, and looked away.

He understood a lot of what wasn’t said. He knew exactly why someone was late for training, why any two people refused to pair up, why someone was quieter than usual. He always kept it to himself too. Skye respected that, but she wished he share his deductive empathetic tricks with her. Skye never had a clue why something was happening. All she could do was be nice and give hugs and role with it. She was their leader; she should know this stuff.

“I was sick on every single one of my birthdays,” Fury said. “Even at birth I came out almost dead. It’s the only time I get sick, so I never cared for them much either. All the presents I got were medicine and chicken soup and hot water bottles.”

“Didn’t your parents do anything for your birthday when you got better?”

“Nah. My birthday’s just before Christmas and we didn’t have a lot of money, so…”

“Huh.” Skye was impressed with the amount of information he’d just given her about himself. She thought he was the Secret Spy Master of Secrets who never told anyone anything. Assuming everything he’d just said was true; though what was the point in making it up? She smirked. “So, you’ve got like a bona fide curse on you or something.”

“Yeah, it sucks,” he said, smirking back.

They were about to lapse back into companionable silence, but then Fury asked, “So… what were your… homes like? Were they okay?”

Skye looked at him, again trying to parse how much she should share. She was suspicious about why he was asking, but then she remembered that the reason she was put in the system and moved around so much was so that SHIELD could protect her, and Fury was the director back then. He was probably the one to make the call. He was probably wondering if it had been the right one, especially after the last couple of years.

“Yeah, some of them were. One in particular…” She decided she didn’t want to get into it. Thinking about the nice homes could be harder than thinking about the mean ones. “But I never fit in anywhere better than I fit in here, with SHIELD and Coulson, May, my team, you. SHIELD is the best home I’ve had.”

“See? You’re not the first person to feel that way, but I still find it kind of alarming.”

“Heh. Yeah, I guess it is, kinda. But we got each other’s backs. That’s the important thing.”

“You’re probably right.”

This time they did fall comfortably back into silence for a while, now a little more awake, the heat less oppressive.

“Still though,” Fury continued, unable to drop the topic, “If SHIELD is going to be a home to so many people, and not just a place where spies live, it’s a good thing we’ve got you.”

Skye felt she was too old to still get that fluttery feeling in her stomach at every bit of praise, but that’s what was happening now. She smiled. “Yeah?  Coulson was hoping I’d take on the Welcome Wagon.”

“The what?”

“Nothing. He was hoping I could make this place more inviting.”

“Well, look how many kids joined because of you. And you haven’t let them down yet. They’re all kind of in love with you.”

“Hm. I wish I could connect with them the way you can.”

Fury stared at her, baffled. “What are talking about? You’re the one doing all the connecting.”

“They listen to you in a way that they don’t with me. They take you more seriously. And you always know exactly what’s going on.”

“Everyone takes me seriously. I look like a man who should be taken seriously at all times. You’re the one who’s doing all the work, and look at the progress you’ve made with them. They don’t come to me when they need something; they go to you.”

“I told them they could.”

“I didn’t.”

That was probably true. Fury was very helpful when it came to teaching her leadership skills or keeping the recruits in line, but investing himself emotionally seemed to just… not occur to him, or it was irrelevant somehow; something to be kept in his other pocket, the one not containing his professional obligations. Whereas Skye had never been able to separate the two. She got better, but they still got muddled.

Or maybe he was like May. May cared plenty but you had to take it on trust; but even if you didn’t, she wouldn’t stop caring. May was always there for them. Just like Fury was always there for SHIELD, whatever that meant from one day to the next. She wondered if she’d be there for SHIELD for that long, if SHIELD would be there for her for that long. She hoped so. She wanted to count on it. She felt she _could_ count on it, but that doubt in the back of her mind was hard to shake.

“How did you end up here anyway?” Skye asked.

“Well, Coulson thought you could use some help rounding up the troops, and Rogers has been on my case about-“

“No, I meant SHIELD. How did you end up at SHIELD?”

“Oh. Well I was friends with Howard Stark, who was friends with Peggy Carter, and we all ended up at the same party one time and I asked her for a job.”

“Wow. She hired you on the spot?”

“No, she put me through the ringer first. I guess I took it well.”

“Guess so. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to just ask.”

“Well, no, you hated us, from what I recall.”

“That’s true.”

He took another sip of his beer. Skye’s wasn’t warm yet, but it wasn’t as cold as she liked it anymore. She considered if she minded enough to get up and put it in the fridge. She took a swig. Eh, it was fine.

“What made you change your mind?” Fury asked.

“I wanted to find my parents.” Yet another sore subject.

Fury understood that too. “Do you regret it?”

She wasn’t sure if he meant joining SHIELD or looking for her parents, but either way, “No.” She’d thought about this a lot, about what might have been avoided if she hadn’t joined SHIELD or if she hadn’t looked for her parents. Could anything have been avoided? Would things have been worse? In the end she decided there was no point to this line of thinking. She was glad she joined SHIELD and befriended these people. She was glad she found her parents so that she could finally stop looking, so that she finally knew. Everything was a bit of a mess now, but maybe it would prove to be a good thing.

“I wanted to find my sister,” Fury said, offhand.

Skye watched him, waiting for him to continue.

“I didn’t know this until I was in my twenties, but my parents had nine kids altogether. My little sister and I were sent to live with my grandparents, because my mom and dad had enough trouble feeding the older ones and keeping them in line. I think also they didn’t want little kids running around on the farm anymore, after what happened to Max. I’m still not clear on that; I think he fell off a roof, didn’t heal quite right, got sick and died. That was before I was born and no one liked to talk about it. Jonah was killed in the Vietnam War and James… well, I still don’t know for sure. My parents kind of just shut down after him, so I never found out about Angela until much later. This was also before I was born and I couldn’t find a lot of information about it, but I guess she disappeared when she was fifteen. People were suspecting a boy she’d been dating, but I don’t know… Eventually everyone just stopped looking for her. My parents never forgot about her though. I could see it in their faces, that there was something missing that I didn’t know about. Even Malcom and Sam had that look, and they would have been pretty young at the time. Then one day Malcom casually mentioned ‘our older sister Angela’ and wouldn’t open up about it. I guess I wanted to give everyone closure, or I thought I could save her or something. I just kept seeing my mom’s face and needing to find my sister.”

“Did you find her?”

“Yeah. Eventually. She’s married, got grandkids and a nice garden and all that. She’s fine. Rose visits her all the time.”

“What about your parents?”

“They’d already passed away.”

The silence sat heavily around them, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Fury had that look of having just unloaded a huge emotional weight. She was probably the first person to hear all that.

“There was this homeless shelter I used to go to,” Skye began, “when I couldn’t stay at home anymore. The lady who ran it, Bethany, took pretty much anyone in. She was like a big, tough, muscly angel. She could diffuse any fight; she made sure there were always enough food and beds. I mean, it was a pretty basic setup, but it was just welcoming, you know? I felt more at home there than at the three story house with the bedroom suite. Because Bethany never demanded anything of me. She was just always there. And she recognized us, knew us all by name, and was always happy to see us. She was really nice, in her own tough-girl sort of way. Then one day she wasn’t there anymore. The whole shelter had closed down. I guess it wasn’t getting enough funding or something. I know finding other volunteers was a struggle. Maybe that was the problem. But it was just a safe place that I could count on, and a lot of that had to do with the person taking care of me.”

“SHIELD’s not exactly a safe haven.”

“But people should be able to count on it.”

“Your teammates can count on you. And you can count on SHIELD. Unfortunately, you know, shit happens, but we always try to fix it.”

Skye sighed. “I guess that’s all we can do.” She lifted her beer bottle in front of her face and shook it, watching it swish around. She’d only finished half of it but it was warm by this point. She got up and put it in the fridge.

Fury craned his neck to watch her. “Going to bed?”

Skye stretched. “Yeah, I guess I probably should.”

Fury levered himself up, groaning as he did. “Good idea.” He put his beer in the fridge. “Think maybe I’ll camp out outside. Maybe it’ll be cooler out there.”

“You’ll get eaten alive.”

“Yeah…  Stuffy woolly bed it is then. Happy birthday agent Skye. Goodnight.”

He went into his bedroom and shut the door. Skye went to the sink and watched the moths flapping around outside. She ran her fingers lightly up and down her ribs, pressing against the bruises, and thought about all the people she’d hired, how she’d helped them understand their powers and how to control them, help other people with them. She wouldn’t be able to protect them forever. They were SHIELD agents now, after all. It was odd. She’d never been the mother hen to baby chicks before. It was scary, but she must be doing something right.

Time for bed. It had been a long day and it would be another long one tomorrow.


End file.
